Rights & Wrongs: Cambodia, Ethiopia, DRC and More

CAMBODIA MARKS ANNIVERSARY, BUT NO CLOSURE -- Cambodia marked the 30th anniversary of the demise of the Khmer Rouge regime Jan. 7 with memorials for the suffering of millions. But the country remains haunted by the knowledge that perpetrators of Cambodia's greatest crime have yet to stand trial for their crimes.

Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime held sway over Cambodia from 1975-1979, a period in which millions of Cambodians died from torture, overwork, starvation and executions. In early 1979, a joint Vietnamese-Cambodian force toppled the regime, bringing in a new government largely beholden to its Vietnamese allies. Some Cambodians object to celebrating the date's anniversary, as it ushered in a decade of restrictive Vietnamese control, while others mark it as the close to Cambodia's darkest chapter.

The celebrations contained no public recognition of the lingering frustration and confusion over the government's failure so far to try any of the people responsible for the Khmer Rouge's worst atrocities, despite the efforts of a United Nations-backed tribunal designed to do so.

Many of the Khmer Rouge's most notorious leaders have passed away, including Pol Pot, who died in 1998. But five central figures of the regime's murderous campaigns have been indicted by the court and are awaiting trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Kang Kek Ieu (better known as "Duch"), who commanded the infamous S-21 torture center in Phnom Penh where 15,000 prisoners -- nearly everyone who entered the facility -- died, may be the first to go on trial in March.

Rights groups and opposition politicians have questioned the tribunal's ability to conduct its operations free from political influence, raising the specter of a government unwilling to let the trials proceed due to fears some of its cadres might be implicated during the process.

"After 30 years, no one has been tried, convicted or sentenced for the crimes of one of the bloodiest regimes of the 20th century. This is no accident. For more than a decade, China and the United States blocked efforts at accountability, and for the past decade Hun Sen has done his best to thwart justice," Brad Adams, Asia Director for Human Rights Watch said in a press release.

NEW ETHIOPIA LAW ANGERS RIGHTS ADVOCATES -- The Ethiopian government is coming under fire from rights groups and aid organizations over a new law that severely restricts the aid community's ability to address the health- and rights-related concerns of the Ethiopian population.

"The law's repressive provisions are believed to be an attempt by the Ethiopian government to conceal human rights violations, stifle critics and prevent public protest of its actions ahead of expected elections in 2010," Amnesty International said in a statement urging donor governments to condemn the legislation and monitor its implementation.

Parliament endorsed the law, which restricts the operations of any foreign group working on issues related to gender equality, children's rights, disabled rights, conflict resolution and criminal justice, on Jan. 6. Any domestic non-governmental organization receiving more than 10 percent of its funding from international sources will be subject to the same restrictions.

Opposition politicians and rights advocates predict as many as 95 percent of the 3,500 organizations working in Ethiopia will be forced to close their operations as a result of the law, and worry that the government will use the law as a means of control. The law's backers said no organizations would be closed but instead be required to fund and source their operations locally.
Ethiopia, desperately poor and facing yet another famine, is one of the world's largest donor recipients.

SENEGALESE GAY COMMUNITY REELS IN WAKE OF SENTENCES -- Senegalese judicial authorities sentenced nine gay men to jail terms of eight years each on charges of conspiracy and unnatural acts, Jan. 8. The decision, the first of its kind in Senegal, outraged gay rights groups and rattled a community already living in fear of punitive laws.

As Rights & Wrongs previously reported, dozens of countries around the world have laws criminalizing homosexual relations and a recent attempt by the United Nations General Assembly to reaffirm gay rights garnered mixed results. Senegal, considered one of Islamic Africa's most tolerant countries, has been commended in recent years for its advances on rights protection in general, but has been susceptible to rising anti-gay sentiment across the African continent.

SECURITY COUNCIL APPLAUDED FOR CONGO RESOLUTION -- Global Witness commended the United Nations Security Council last week for recent resolutions to prevent the financial exploitation of the Democratic Republic of Congo's resources to fuel conflict and human rights abuses there.

Human rights groups including Global Witness, which focuses exclusively on resource usage and international trade systems, have been raising concerns over the relationship between resources and conflict in the DRC for the better part of a decade.

The resolutions, passed by the UNSC on Dec. 22, give the U.N. peacekeeping force in the DRC the authority to "use its monitoring and inspection capacities to curtail the provision of support to illegal armed groups derived from illicit trade in natural resources," and provides for sanctions on any entity facilitating the operations of illegal armed groups through trade in resources.

Mining and sales of cassiterite (tin ore), gold, coltan (an essential component of mobile phones) and wolframite (from which tungsten is derived) are among the activities that fund armed groups in the area.

Recent violence in the DRC has forced more than 250,000 people from their homes, in addition to more than 1 million displaced by previous conflagrations. Rights abuses against the civilian population have been all too common. In particular, widespread use of rape as a weapon has reached epidemic proportions in DRC, with aid workers calling the situation the worst in the world. No one knows for sure how many women have been brutalized and estimates range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

Juliette Terzieff is a journalist who specializes in human rights. Her WPR column, Rights & Wrongs, appears every other Monday.